


The magic lute

by hauntedpoem



Series: Say hello to your new boyfriend [5]
Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Art, Luthien has Isadora Duncan Vibes, Music, Musical Composition, Musician Maglor, Other, Unrequited Love, aesthetics &co, batshit timeline, dance, death-so much death, this is major canon divergence, uncertain age
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-12-24
Packaged: 2018-10-08 10:04:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10384221
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hauntedpoem/pseuds/hauntedpoem
Summary: Maglor/Thranduil arc in this series.





	1. Farfalla

**Author's Note:**

> I wish to thank TheMirkyKing for the incentive.  
> This is merely an introductory chapter.  
> Farfalla means butterfly in Italian.  
> -  
> The title of this work (the magic lute? :p) is a screw-up of Mozart's "The magic flute" opera.  
> [Yes, I know.](https://68.media.tumblr.com/38691124a4e2cde4cde37218625a96ec/tumblr_nigm8oTMew1u84fnpo1_500.gif)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some touchy-feely reminiscing Maglor.  
> Hasn't been betaed or even edited that much so if you see something hideously embarrassing like a typo, please tell me.

*Farfalla*

  
The Beleriand building is an imposing art nouveau with sweeping lines and expressive arches and delicate acanthus leaves embellishing its hallway pillars. The building is quiet at this time of day when the sun is up in the sky and cars rush onto the streets. An errant ray of filtered light crawls slowly over potted plants and fat, glossy leaves, descending like a lazy cat over the mosaic floor.  
Then, as the sun breaks through persistent city clouds, the light breaks into multicoloured lines, temporarily printing on the floor the greens and blues and reds of the stained glass.

Maglor Feanorion lives here. His apartment covers the entire last floor. When he comes home, he usually takes the creaking lift instead of the stairs and keeps the door to his apartment open when he's watering the rows of plants that litter the space leading to his apartment. Climbing the wall, there's a yellow rose, and to the left of his apartment door, a huge, tropical plant seems to thrive in the half light.

Maglor's apartment is sound proof. He has a small recording room and a living room that could hold fifty guests. 

He spends most of his time there, between the tall walls of his music room, in front of the piano or plucking at the strings of his harp. Maglor has no definite schedule and for the past three years, he's been living and sleeping and working chaotically with no sensible end results. He's been pursuing the ineffable, the thing that eluded others and he's lost interest half way. Music. Art. Poetry. It's in the blood of Feanorions.

Stacks of books line the cracked walls. Sometimes, a small turret of music notes and papers accumulate in on the floor and dust settles in fine layers on them.  
He's been working on several pieces at once, not because they were commissioned but mainly because he would get really bored working on one at a time.

Maglor usually works well into the evening, dispensing a couple of hours to take care of meals and the apartment, immersing himself completely into the chores only to be struck by inspiration and then leave everything he was working on to pursue the new, wonderful thought. in creation, he's entirely free but lately, he stopped pursuing music as eagerly as in the past.

There are nights when Maglor cannot sleep because his mind is as awake as ever, conscience as sharp as a knife. He is shocked at the clarity of his thinking, running from thought to thought like an unbridled horse. He achieved nothing, just wasted the time of day with meaningless pursuits yet he satisfied his elvish curiosity and beauty.  
The noises in the night taunt him. The heater, the fridge, the sound of old furniture into the night. A trapped moth trying to merge with neon light, a butterfly gravitating towards the heavy-scented Paulownia flowers or the deceiving windows.

He once left Beleriand for a week, completely ignored his work although he carried all his stacks of paper into his suitcase and spent an inconvenient amount of time securing a room at the Prancing Pony Inn, only to sleep and eat and drink and occasionally converse with the owner, Butterburr. Gossip from a small town. Useless, meaningless, inconsistent gossip.  
Then he returned only to find nothing changed except for the cobwebs adorning the corners of his rooms and a stuck faucet which began dripping at odd intervals, sometimes waking him in the middle of the night, brimming with insanity and pain.

He spends an inordinate amount of time on the sofa, enshrouded in a shawl. He thinks. If he wished, he could go back to Valinor. If he wished, he could stop the serpentine motion of the mortal coil. he doesn't miss his mother. He misses his brothers' laughter and the family dinners and his father's forceful grace.

  
Maglor misses her. Not her presence, not her memory. He misses her existence. Luthien.

  
There are countless albums of memories and many yellowed testaments to her existence. Surprisingly, not a single photograph of hers adorns a single space on his walls. Because he doesn't need a photograph to remember her by.

  
There are,  in a typical Feanorian way, framed photos displayed in a mysterious sequence along his walls, on the hearth, on a massive piece of furniture.

His brothers, numerous and dead, his father, singular in his genius, also dead, his mother- alive and forever young in the picture, his grandfather, dead, grandmother, dead, the maternal grandparents, alive and well, still and his cousins, some, alive, some, dead, mostly the ones that mattered to him.

  
He should have hired someone to do the cleaning, to fix the creaking cabinets and sort through the disparate music sheets and help him compile a decent work but Lindir comes to help, probably out of some devout sense of duty for a fellow musician. He's been commissioned several songs to incorporate in a rather funny play that Erestor wrote for the Imladrian Academy, now resting all its troublemaking possibilities on Elrond's shoulders. After her assault, Celebrian decided to leave indefinitely for Aman and by some strange sleight of hand from fate, Maglor found himself commissioned to write music whenever they demanded it.  
They usually sent Lindir to check up on him and collect the work, most recently, probably because he got his home phone branched off and his mobile was somewhere, under an enormous pile of music notes and without a viable battery, they send Lindir to see if he's alive and well. The concern shown towards him had exactly the opposite effect. Instead of growing productive, he became restless.

Lindir brings him a basket of groceries every week and makes small talk. Usually, Maglor keeps him in the hallway. He knows it's impolite but he doesn't need the brown chocolate eyes to widen at the state of his rooms.

Today he takes his lute and strums, unconscious of the twists and turns of the melody, already fleshed out from sheer carelessness. After what seems like hours, he realises he's been recording it and exhales relieved that he will have enough material to bribe Lindir into silence to his employer about the state of their favourite musician. 

Maglor keeps seeing Thranduil because he's pale haired and not female. At least that's what he told himself in the solitude of his apartment but that is not what it is in reality.

He discovered he's afraid he might have moved on. And then he's relieved. But their relationship is not something easily understood either.

He still remembers the day they've met when someone insistently kept knocking at his door.  
Maglor remembers him as a young man, tall and beautiful -not handsome- if not a bit jaded. The strong eyebrows but the extremely delicate features, like one of Nerdanel's sculptures.He wanted Maglor to have Luthien's handwritten music pieces and he demanded his help with something so preposterous in its urgency that Maglor felt threatened for a moment.  
"My mother's piano, you have to buy my mother's piano."

In the light of the news of Oropher's death, that sounded as desperate as it actually was. It did not matter that Thranduil knew he would love to have her works, a particle of her work. Terrifying, Maglor would call it later, having the son of one of the wealthiest Sindar, come to him with such a proposition. The reality was worse than he imagined at first. The criminal who called himself Annatar had taken hold of Oropher's possessions and five days after the funeral, he had his councillors sell everything. Thranduil's deposit could not be accessed unless much later and to everyone's utter shock, he was himself a widowed young father, not yet 21.  
The mere idea was inconceivable to him.

  
He laughed at how preposterous it all was. Thranduil was back then a child himself. So Maglor shut the door expecting it was all a very crafty nightmare. he shut his door only t shiver in his marble hallway, surrounded by his father's trinkets and his mother's sculptures, and the accusing photos of his older brother, the one who strayed and secretly married their cousin.

If strangeness and uniqueness ran the theme of his family, why couldn't Maglor accept that in a stranger? He was just a boy who asked for his help. Maglor deems he's waited for a while, worrying the hem of his robe with uncertain hands. When he opened the door, unsurprisingly, the boy, Thranduil, was still there, tears streaking his perfect face. He did not stop until he took him into his arms and calmed him down. 

He would do anything, of course he would.

It now strikes him that he did not do it for Luthien. Not at all.

 


	2. Limerence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His love continued to burn brighter for her, despite her wayward heart.  
> Limerence is is a state of mind which results from a romantic attraction to another person and typically includes obsessive thoughts and fantasies and a desire to form or maintain a relationship with the object of love and have one's feelings reciprocated.

It was obvious his brother preferred men, Maglor came to realize after their grandfather failed yet again to secure a marriage for his eldest grandson. Although it should not be any of his business, Maglor thought.

They came here to these distant lands after weeks on the sea and all they wanted was to start a new life. Maitimo took a sindarized form of his name and he waited for his cousin, his lover to meet him upon the shores. They did not hurt anyone else but themselves so they continued to love one another far away from their relatives who were spending their days in Valinor, an ocean away from where he has settled.

 Maglor knew about Fingon and how secretive the two have become about their relationship. And to his dismay, they knew that he knew and tried to bribe him with gifts to keep silent about it. Sometimes, there was fear at their discovery, flashing white in Fingon’s eyes. His dear Maedhros always calmed him down, putting a hand on his back.

“Kano is our friend, beloved.”

“Indeed,” Fingon replied and Maglor couldn’t help but want to comfort him as well. He was no traitor. Especially not to his family, not even when they were sons of Indis.

Maglor had no intention of saying a word to anyone, anyway, not when his brother has finally found happiness with someone. Let them bear their burden and let him find his path in love and life as well, he thought.

That proved to be more difficult to Maglor. For a long time, he lived life as if love would never touch him, would never infect him. To him, music was far too important than finding ‘the one’, if that even existed. Maglor was quite the pragmatist, something that clashed violently with the artist-musician stereotype. Afraid of his depths, he veiled them with the pleasure he took in music and forgot about the abyss inside. He never thought much of what love should be for him and when it happened, at last, Maglor fell hard. So hard that he contemplated perishing than living without the one he almost gave his soul to.

He met Luthien through Daeron, an exchange student at the Conservatory. She wasn’t supposed to know about his existence and he wasn’t supposed to know that such perfection even existed. It could have been easier if things happened as they were supposed to, anyway. Less heartbreak to come Maglor’s way.

He was younger than most of his peers when he completed the work that would land him a contract with the Opera House. The Silmarills was a musical epic in three parts that garnered positive critical attention and the admiration of his fellow musicians. Daeron was already an accomplished and quite popular artist and was consulting him at the time on some piece of music he wrote for Doriath’s Theater. Luthien just happened to have finished her practice sessions earlier that day.

If that did not happen exactly as it happened, Maglor and Luthien would have never crossed paths.

He did not like her at first. Actually, he found her unbearably annoying. It’s true, he found her attractive and intelligent and talented, but these were things that anyone could have said about Thingol and Melian’s daughter. To his surprise, he felt threatened by her grace and her skill and beyond everything, by her presence. Their first meeting felt like a confrontation, like a battle of wills.

She did not like his abrupt and self-centered way in which he talked about his work as if it was all that mattered in the world, yet she couldn’t just leave him be with a well-served insult for she found him as fascinating as he found her.

Maglor had a perfectly pitched voice, musical talent and the determination that others associated with passion and others with obstinacy in artistic types. Luthien was an enigma. She could sing and dance, she could paint wonderfully and she could hold political debates. She just needed to centre herself on an area and master it because anyone could see the immense potential. It unnerved Maglor that she was scattered in her passions and held the innocence of a child when it came to approaching any art. As usual, the results were amazing but they lacked a will of pursuit, they seemed, almost accidental.

Maglor despised this errantry in her endeavours. But then, when he thought hard enough, his thoughts sweetened when her pretty visage appeared in his imagination, her dark skin glimmering with mystery, her long hair always swishing about her.

Luthien’s hair was the inspiration for songs but he wouldn’t fall into the lovesickness that Daeron often mentioned when he talked about her. It was obvious, he found in Daeron an honest and burning source of all things Luthien Tinuviel, he found in Daeron an opponent. Daeron, although talented, was no competition musically. However, he was close to Luthien, her friend and confidante, and Maglor disliked that. He wanted that for himself. Jealousy, it was an ugly feeling and he smote it immediately.

But none of them expected what happened next. It was Daeron that came bearing the ill news. Luthien’s interest focused like a laser-beam on another. They hoped together, in silence that it would be again childish and superficial, here today and gone tomorrow. Beren was human after all. He had nothing special. No talent of renown. He couldn’t even sing her praises. He couldn’t even talk Quenya.

He would be gone in a matter of years and Luthien, Luthien would come to see her mistake. That’s when Maglor took Daeron’s place as her friend and confidante. Daeron had been stricken by the news, unable to move forth but as a Feanorian, Maglor found in himself the strength to plough forward with his music, the beautiful that ever existed. He made no secret that he liked her and in time, before she even laid eyes on that mortal, Beren, she showed him, clearly that she liked him as well.

If fucking in her under the trees in front of her father’s study were any clear indicators, Maglor thought crudely. And he was avid for she was his true love, the first for whom he laid himself bare of secrets. She would return to him when she would tire of her mortal. In aspects of patience and dignity, Maglor was his superior, always.

Just like with his brother and Fingon, love would come through. It wouldn’t do to rush it, to cry and to plead. Not even his songs held the pain of potentially losing her because losing Luthien was not even a possibility that Maglor considered. She would return, she would come to him when she would tire of mortal love.


	3. Farouche

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maglor at Luthien's wedding.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Maglor doesn't despise Beren. Not overtly, at least.

 

 

She married him after all.

Not even Daeron thought she would and Daeron was rarely wrong on her accounts.

She went against her father’s wishes; Melian didn’t say anything, just watched with cold eyes as if she were detached from everything else. Moreover, he was invited to their wedding – not as a musician, of course, but as a beloved friend. She would hire a choir of mortal women to sing for them all night at the party.

Daeron received an invitation as well.  So did many others he knew loved her and lusted after her. Maglor didn’t know whether she was aware of what she did, of her charm, of her magic. Sometimes, eh thought she was deliberate in all this and perhaps she expected them all to refuse such an offer, thinking it would be too heartbreaking to see her married to another. Maglor showed up after cooking up a noncommittal answer to her RSPV. He dressed in an eggshell tux and he thought he stood up too much, too bright among the black ones. Daeron didn’t come.

Luthien didn’t wear white. She wore red. And Beren didn’t look too well either. He was nervous and sweating, his hair looked unkempt, on his face, although freshly-shaven, Maglor could see the spikes of a dark beard.

It made it easier to accept it. Although Beren was male, he wasn’t elvish. Perhaps it was again one of Luthien’s strange passions.  And like all her passions, it will quickly come to pass.

What was in her head? What was she thinking? Sometimes, he thought that what they went through or what they had, meant nothing to her. But he wasn’t quite sure, that’s why he insisted on finding out.

Did she keep him at arm’s length? Not really but Beren didn’t leave her side. He went up to them, still holding his champagne flute, untouched. He congratulated them and couldn’t help but reveal his happiness at her happiness. She laughed and hugged him and kissed his cheek and she introduced Beren to him.

“Beren, husband, this is Maglor, a great musician.”

And not once did she take her eyes off Beren’s face as if the mortal held the mystery and grace of the light of the trees itself etched in those lines on his ageing face. Even the skin on his hands was rough and hairy. Maglor did everything he could, to keep himself from shuddering at the thought. Perhaps Luthien liked the fur, the yellowing teeth, the greying hair. The roughness of the ageing skin. Maglor would later admit it held a certain charm, in the way that old leather furniture made a room look ancient without the quality of lasting very long.

Beren would expire, he thought as he watched intently the rising bubbles in his champagne.

And Beren did expire. So did Luthien.

And this Maglor could not get out of his mind. It left a void that nothing could fill. Not even the sight of their preternatural child.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading!


	4. The willow song

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He opens the door to Oropher's son who has to tell a short tale of woe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I'm late.

 

_The willow song_

 

“Please, buy my mother’s piano.” The young man  said through hiccupping tears.

In great detail, Maglor remembers everything that had to do with Thranduil the heir of Oropher and the Sindar legacy in Arda. He took him in his arms strongly, forcefully, to offer support, to let him lean on his shoulder. He was a mere reed in his arms, ready to break from the tumultuous storm that his emotions created. Maglor would not let him break. He would care for this fragile one until he turned out stronger and taller and more beautiful than the morning blooming water lilies.

“And why would I do that?” he asked the crying young man that has wet his purple velvet robe at the junction of neck to shoulder. It’s been many yeni since he felt another’s… anything on his skin. And this was a complete stranger came to beg. His eyes were cascading salty water. That was all. Nothing did break. Just a small wound that Maglor would help close to nothingness, not even a scar would remain.

“Because if you don’t, I would have nothing left of her.”

It was that tragic. His pale, corn silk hair was sticking to his porcelain face. Streaked with tears, wet, salty and oh, how come he didn’t notice the bloody lip?

Thranduil’s lips were so dry that it was a miracle he could cry so much.

It made quite an impression on Maglor at the time.

He expected those eyes to grow sapphire blue, even more, startling since his eyes were so red with crying and dehydration but his irises remained pale, icy, like the mountain spires of Hithlum. Maglor knew there was hope because this one was as strong as mithril and he didn’t even know. Maglor could sense it. So much suffering slowly and painfully toughening him up, just like mithril boils insubstantial into the earth’s bowels.

 Why hush him, when he could simply allow him to let it all out. Eru, only knows, the boy – not yet a man- needed it more than ever.

“It’s all right, you’re safe here.” (In my arms – he didn’t add that. What person says that to a desperate stranger, anyway?)

This was it. Finally, a breach in the thick silence of his solitude. This trembling creature in his arms, tall and sinewy and cold looking. He spent so much time obsessing over the loss of Luthien that the world moved beside him at an alarming pace while he was left there with pieces and false memories.

“It’s really important,” the youth whispered too close to his ear, his breath too humid and hot next to his neck. His pulse started racing at the shy rasp of it. “They all died. I am all alone. And father… father” he was not really speaking, more like crying with a crystalline sound that was so addictive in its desperation, like a symphony. “Father got cheated by him.” Tears like pearls, like liquid diamonds. Nerdanel would have sculpted in diamond if only she found the inexhaustible source from where it sprung. Music could be created anew. All he wanted was to hear him continue. He could surrender to this voice. He could die through it. And why was this young man crying when Maglor hasn't been able to shed a tear for years? 

“He took everything away from me and now he wants to take the only thing I have from her. And if he takes it then what am I going to do with my son? I cannot give him up.”

What? A son?

He took a good look at the young man and he noticed him looking back with absolute determination.

“You understand me? I would do anything. Anything!” The fury, the undying passion in those words. That voice.

It stirred Maglor’s creative dregs. Yes, he could write something right now, if only this clinging youth will keep speaking to him more of his tale of woe. And a son. At his age? And he did it, finally spoke and his voice felt like those doors that open and crack due to a draft. Why did he keep so silent? How could he bear such torture? How could he exact it upon himself of all people?

“Sing, willow, willow, willow,” he murmured in fascination. It was the strangest thing to say.

The icy eyes were fixed on his. “I cannot let him take my son. I will be deemed unfit to parent. I am barely out of my majority and have no fortune now. He made sure to take it all away. My father died of grief, my wife gave birth in a crushed car, her legs crushed and her arms broken. My mother died right after she gave birth to me. I just can’t. I can’t lose him as well.” He was serious. “You must help me.”

He must help. Must. This young man was used to order people around. He was tall, smart, confident to a point, albeit shaken. And he wanted revenge. Maglor could sense that. He wanted revenge on the monster that took everything away from him. A monster he used to love. Or so he thought.

“Please come inside,” he dragged the words out of him like a thread. He felt a funny sensation in his throat. After he shut the door behind him, he could barely move.

“I am Thranduil Oropherion, by the way.”

Oropherion, of course, Maglor thought and the aftershock started spreading in his body, leaving him weak and unfocused.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title borrowed from Verdi's opera Otello. Willow, willow -sung by Desdemona *who got killed by Otello just because he thought she was cheating on him with some dude from the hood.)  
> Here ya go:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MMDa0Ua_KrI

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading!  
> kudos and comments are chocolate cake!  
> -  
> [This](http://www.unjourdeplusaparis.com/files/2012/10/immeuble-rapp-paris.jpg) is what art nouveau looks like. It's decorative and skillful. Imagine this as Maglor's [building](http://hauntedpoem.tumblr.com/image/158600218542).  
> Here's a picture of the [interior](http://hauntedpoem.tumblr.com/image/158600144217) of the building, here are [some stairs](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/af/Tassel_House_stairway.JPG/450px-Tassel_House_stairway.JPG).  
> Maglor's apartment [hallway ](http://sipfon.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/best-hallway-decoration-with-chest-carpet-decoration-combined-green-plant-pot-also-nice-mounted-picture-featuring-classic-hanging-lamp-ideas-awesome-garage-doors-interior-design-have-a-lovely-house-wi.jpg)and [interior](http://cdn.trendir.com/wp-content/uploads/old/archives/2016/02/17/simple-remodel-chess-floors-14.jpg). And [some](http://www.modernsilver.com/The_aristocrats.jpg) [random](http://www.veniceclayartists.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Art-Nouveau-nude-female-sculpture.jpg) [sculptures](http://68.media.tumblr.com/09e41a36d05e7c352aed83d93a64276e/tumblr_nmk0pwDIVR1rpgpe2o1_1280.jpg)... for the gist of it.


End file.
